July 22, 2015

Michel Foucault was a prolific and original thinker. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Susan James discusses some of the ways in which he explored questions about knowledge in his writing.

July 06, 2015

If A is a better course of action than B, and B is better than C, it seems to follow that A must be a better course of action than C. This is what is known as the axiom of transitivity. Larry Temkin questions the assumption that transitivity is a feature of our moral judgements - his challenge has come to be known as 'Temkin's Paradox'. If he's right, then many assumptions that philosophers and others make about rationality need revising, with far-reaching consequences for practical ethics.

June 21, 2015

How should we live? That's one of the basic philosophical questions. The Stoics had some answers. But are these at all relevant today? William B. Irvine, along with a number of other contemporary philosophers, believes we can learn from Stoicism. It's a philosophy that can change your life. Is he right?

June 06, 2015

Relations of power affect us all. But do we know what power is? Steven Lukes sets out his three-dimensional account of this key concept in conversation with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

April 28, 2015

Relativism has popular appeal. But why? Tim Williamson Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, (and also @tetralogue on Twitter), discusses this question, and attempts to immunise us against sloppy thinking in this area.

March 19, 2015

We're all irrational some of the time. Yet many past philosophers have put a great emphasis on human rationality as what sets us apart, and even made it a condition of moral action. In this episode of Philosophy Bites Lisa Bortolotti (@lisabortolotti) explores some different types of irrationality and the implications for human agency.

February 03, 2015

Harvard philosopher Christine Korsgaard defends a Kantian account of the status of animals in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. She argues that we should treat animals as ends in themselves and spells out what that means in practice.

January 18, 2015

Historically the philosophy of education has been at the core of the subject. Today there are relatively few philosophers working in this area. Meira Levinson, a philosopher with experience of teaching in US public schools, is one of them. Here she discusses fundamental questions about what we are trying to do when we educate our children.

December 20, 2014

This 38 minute bonus episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast is a compilation of responses to the question 'Who is the most impressive philosopher you've met?' It includes the late Ronald Dworkin's answer.

December 07, 2014

What is probability? Not an easy question to answer, that. We figured our best chance of clarity on the issue was to speak to the Cambridge philosopher and author of a book on the topic, Hugh Mellor...